


Of All Fears Disarm

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-01
Updated: 2007-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:18:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sooner or later, it was going to happen. They'd been waiting for a while now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of All Fears Disarm

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to iamstealthyone for the thorough beta-read.

This wasn't how she'd imagined it.

Oh, she was no idealist, it's not like she'd expected it to be a perfect evening. Nothing in life was ever perfect. In fact, it sometimes sucked beyond all reason, so you enjoyed what you could get when you could get it.

So it wasn't that she'd expected things to be all sparkly-perfect. In fact, she hadn't pictured it sparkly at all, hoping for more along the lines of some great dancing to actual music, not the techno crap most of her friends liked. Then maybe she and Jack would leave, go out to the parking lot to find a car hood to sit on. Lean back against the windshield as she kicked off her high heels. And maybe she'd get to do a few things that would make Mom's talks and warnings actually relevant for a change.

It's just that, you know, it was _prom_. Personally, she found the whole thing a little silly but part of her also wanted to go and have a good time and maybe float, just a little. Maybe have things be sparkly for about five minutes.

Five minutes, that's all.

 _Can't always get what you want..._

Yeah, that was true enough, but for fuck's sake, there was not all sparkly-perfect, and then there was screaming, breaking glass, confusion, and chaos. There were tables overturning, balloons popping like imitation gunshots, the music dying, and the DJ running like all of hell's minions were on his heels, not even bothering to gather up his equipment.

Junior prom, pretty much screwed, and no, that wasn't how she'd imagined it.

Her voice shook so much she almost couldn't get out the speed-dial command.

Dad answered. "Jodi?"

"Something's happened."

There was a pause, and then she heard Dad's quickly indrawn breath. "Where are you?"

She swallowed and glanced at Jack, who tucked his sports jacket more firmly around her shoulders. She smiled at him weakly. If one thing good came out of this, it was realizing he wasn't going to crap out on her. Because he'd seen it, the whole thing, and he was still standing there with her.

"At school. There's police here. Because, um..."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. A few people were injured, not too bad, all things considered."

She heard Dad muttering in the background, and then Mom got on the phone.

"Honey?" Mom said slowly. "What happened?"

"I think it was a...hellhound?" Her voice squeaked over the word. She didn't dare look at Jack, but his hands never left her shoulders.

"Oh," Mom said in her calm, inside-I'm-screaming voice.

There were blinking police lights all around them, cascades of blue and red. It was almost festive. Prom after all, and she almost laughed.

"We'll be right there," Dad said, his voice gone to that scary place it sometimes went when he was really angry or frightened.

"No!" she said.

God, no. She'd called home right away on instinct, but she wasn't ready to face them, not yet. She didn't give a rat's ass about breaking down in front of Jack, the cops, and the few remaining students. But before she faced her family, she needed time to gather herself, figure out how best to behave to minimize anxious hovering and questions and fussing.

"No," she said more softly. "The police will drop me off. They need to ask me a few more questions."

After some more protests, they gave in. "Dad just called your Uncle Dean," Mom said. "We'll be waiting for you, honey." She hung up.

Great.

They'd all been waiting for it for a while now, hadn't they? She could tell Mom and Dad hoped it would stay away. Even Uncle Dean sometimes had an odd look on his face at the end of their training sessions. He'd take back the crossbow or whatever it was they were working on that week as if he thought he should be sorry he'd given it to her in the first place, but wasn't, and felt guilty for it.

She shivered in Jack's sports jacket and down stared at the scarlet bloodstains on her blue dress.

She tried to answer the cops patiently: no, she hadn't gotten a good look at it, what with the dim lights and the holographic disco ball. Finally, she put on a lip tremble that was only half-faked and the cops said she could go.

Jack's parents arrived to take him home. As she handed him back his jacket, he promised to call her tomorrow.

He either would or he wouldn't, but when he put his hand out to touch her hair, she felt inclined to believe he would.

During the ride in the back of the squad car, she leaned her head back, watching the streetlights flicker by, the tall trees and pretty houses of their nice Indiana town. By the time the car glided to a halt in front of her house, she thought she had it worked out.

It was no big deal. It's not like they hadn't expected this.

Just imagine how much worse this would be if she had ordinary parents instead of what Mom and Dad were, what Dad used to do, what Uncle Dean still did.

They'd freak right out. If they were ordinary.

Which hers most decidedly weren't.

Through the rear passenger window, she saw all the lights on the first floor were on, as well as the outside floodlights and the pretty porch light. Crap, crap, crap. Mom, Dad, and Uncle Dean were all on the porch. Dad had his arm around Mom and Uncle Dean jumped of the railing where he'd been sitting.

Waiting for her. She took a deep breath.

The cops got out, and one opened the door for her. There were words as the cops explained what had happened in calm, procedural tones.

She didn't think Mom heard them because she shoved right by one of the cops, as if she wasn't half his size and he didn't have a gun, and grabbed her into a hug.

Jodi hugged back, closing her eyes. This year she'd gotten as tall as Mom, but being hugged by her still made her feel like a tiny little girl again. She could feel her control slipping and bit her lip until it hurt because she wasn't going to do that. Not until she was alone.

When she opened her eyes, Uncle Dean was talking to one of the cops, nodding as he listened. Jodi detached herself from Mom as Uncle Dean turned away from the cop, while Dad stood on the front walk, long arms hanging at his sides, brow furrowed.

Five years old when she'd shrieked in fear in the middle of the night. Dad had come running in, hair all disheveled, blinking as he turned on her nightstand light, gathering her into his arms, _what, what is it, Jodes, what is it,_ and she'd informed him there was a monster in her closet. Dad had gone into the closet, knocked on all the walls, and slept the next three nights on the floor of her bedroom with a shotgun. The monster never came back after that, and she'd always been sure it was because Dad had scared it away.

Suddenly she no longer cared what anyone thought. She ran at her father, wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his shirt, the buttons uncomfortable against her nose and eyelid. The terror of the evening slammed over her all at once, and the sobs ripped out of her even while she struggled not to let them.

Dad held onto her tight. "It's okay Jodes, it's okay it's okay it's okay..."

After a little while she felt herself calming and pulled away. She glanced up at Dad, who looked like he might cry, then looked around and saw the cops were gone. She hadn't even heard them drive away.

Uncle Dean rubbed the back of his head with his hand and looked kind of helplessly at Mom, who looked like she might cry herself, which made Uncle Dean stare suddenly up at the stars.

Jodi sniffed hard, and almost laughed as she rubbed the back of her hand across her nose.

"Sweetie, use a tissue," Mom protested.

"Don't have one," she said, and then a Kleenex was pressed into her hand, and she dried her tears.

Mom always seemed to have things like that. The Winchester household was kept well stocked with everything from Band-Aids to gauze, antiseptic, and painkillers.

They walked towards the house. Dad kept his arm around her shoulders. As they moved up the steps into the light, Uncle Dean's fingers closed sharply over her shoulder.

"You bleeding?"

"No. It's not my blood. It's not human blood, even."

He eyed her for a moment, so intently she had to stare down at her shoes, strappy satiny things that seemed absurd now. She thought of that night when she was ten when Uncle Dean had shown up at two in the morning, bleeding an _awful_ lot. Dad had to carry her kicking and yelling back upstairs because she'd refused to go, convinced Uncle Dean was going to die.

"Tell us how it happened." Mom fingered the bloody fabric of her dress, the frown line between her eyes deepening.

Jodi looked up. "It's no big deal. Like I said on the phone, a hellhound decided to crash my junior prom. Funny, right?" She laughed weakly.

"Hilarious," said Uncle Dean.

"Well, it was. You had to be there."

"Wish I had been."

Her uncle's voice was flat, and she shivered inwardly. She'd never watched him kill but knew the precision of his knife throws into the target.

"What about the blood?" Dad asked, guiding her over to one of the wood porch chairs and making her sit.

She looked down at her ridiculous shoes again, how the straps shone in the porch light. The spring evening was warm, but her hands felt like ice. She gripped them between her knees and wished everyone would just go _away_ and let her sit there by herself and not think for a while.

The silence dragged on.

"First kill," said Uncle Dean.

After that, they did leave her alone. The screen door banged shut behind them. From within the house, through the open window, she heard Mom's steady stream of murmurs, Dad's deeper voice answering, Uncle Dean putting in a word or two. All in all, this was going better than she'd hoped.

Only Mom had ever objected to her training, but she had backed down immediately at the simple argument Uncle Dean presented to her and Dad echoed: _because there's still nasty supernatural shit out there._

The neighborhood darkened as lights went out in the houses on their street. A lone dog trotted by, sniffed at their garbage can, and then moved on, tail wagging.

Jodi found herself listening hard into the still spring night, staring at the shadows, trying to read them into shapes.

The sudden crash of glass as the thing came through the clear gym doors was the part that she kept hearing the most. There'd been no warning. If she'd glanced over there, just a moment sooner, she would have spotted the thing sooner.

Maybe no one would have been injured if she had.

A light flicked off behind her; she saw the dimming of the squares cast onto the porch floorboards. The scent of coffee drifted out to her. There were still soft murmured voices coming from the kitchen, but it was only Mom and Dad now.

The screen door swung open and a step made the boards creak. The scent of coffee grew stronger.

"You wanna tell me how you killed it?" Uncle Dean set a plain, unmarked blue mug, wisps of steam rising from the dark liquid, on the floor next to her foot. Then he settled into the other chair with his coffee mug (white, with "@&*%!" printed on it in black) and took a sip.

She kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs up, gathering the fabric of her dress around her bare feet as she stared straight into the darkness.

"Flag stand," she said. "With the school banner on it."

"Hm. I assume it was pretty damn pointy on top?"

"Very pointy."

"How did it go down?"

Running her fingers along the rough wooden arms of the chair, she cleared her throat before speaking. "The thing, it was _there_ , suddenly. People screamed. Glass everywhere. And then it -- Jack was right next to me and it leapt at us so I shoved him down and grabbed the only thing I could find. So now the school banner has hellhound guts all over it. So does my dress." She smoothed her hands over the fabric.

"Casualties?"

"Some people got cut. There were a lot of bruises. There was also a lot of screaming and pushing and panicking." She picked up the mug of coffee, more so she'd have something to do besides look at her uncle than because she really wanted it, but as soon as the warm liquid slid down her throat she was glad for it. She grimaced. "There's more than just coffee and sugar in here."

"Might be." Uncle Dean leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, holding the coffee mug in both hands. He lowered his head, then turned to look over at her. "You did good, kiddo."

"Didn't feel good," she said, and didn't realize she'd started crying again until she saw the surface of her coffee blip as the tears fell into it. She angrily rubbed at her eyes with her thumb and forefinger.

"Talk to me, Jodi."

"I could feel it...when the flag pole went in, it was...squishy. Gross. I could hear the bones cracking. It let out this _howl_..."

"Tip of the flag pole must've been iron," Uncle Dean said, businesslike.

She took another sip of coffee, letting the warmth settle in her chest. "I hated doing it."

As soon as the words were out, she was sorry.

Uncle Dean straightened up, and leaned back in his chair. He winced a little; an old injury.

"You don't have to become a hunter," he said.

She didn't know what to say to that, so she just took another sip of coffee.

"We'll have to go on training. There's no way I'm leaving you not prepared to protect you and yours. But the rest of it -- I'm not going to start asking you to go on jobs with me."

It was a relief, and at the same time she felt a little knot of disappointment in the middle of her chest.

He got to his feet. "Feel better?"

"Yeah. A little. Uncle Dean?" She untucked her legs and went to stand next to him at the railing. "What if I want to later?"

"Just say the word." He set his mug on the railing, then grinned. "So. What did your date say when he saw you in your dress?"

She grinned back. "Subverbal."

"That's my girl."

* * *

Of course she wasn't supposed to, but that never stopped her before. She'd been doing this since she was nine, climbing out on the roof of the porch to listen in on adult conversations.

She wrapped the blanket more closely around herself, the wind tickling her brown hair now hanging loose over her shoulders.

It was a few hours until dawn, and Dad and Uncle Dean were on the porch beneath her. She heard the pop-hiss as they opened up bottles of what she assumed was beer; somehow this didn't seem like a soda kind of night.

"I told her she didn't have to do it if she didn't want to."

"But you're going to keep training her in the basics, right?"

"Of course."

"Fuck, man." There was a pause, probably as Dad took a few swallows of his beer. "I haven't been that terrified in years. If she wasn't such a quick thinker, if you hadn't started her sword training a few months back...Dean, I want her kept so far away from all that, but I know I can't have it. No matter how much I watch her or guard against the monsters, they're going to be out there. The only way I have any hope of her being really safe is if she can fight them."

"But she doesn't have to become a hunter. It'll be like the way I taught Ava. Just enough so she can get by, so if she's attacked she knows a few rituals, a few moves, how to clean and fire and load a gun. That's all."

"Yeah, but I think maybe Jodi wants more than that."

"Maybe."

"She's a kid," said Dad. "She's scared right now. But you should hear how she babbles on after training, about the weapons she's learned about, about the stories you tell her." Another pause. "I'm a little jealous sometimes, to tell the truth."

"Don't be stupid."

"Yeah, I know, but she hero-worships you. And she's more like you than like me."

"Oh, so not true. Have you seen the little bitchface she makes?"

"Ha ha."

They were quiet a few minutes. Jodi scratched her nose and glanced behind her, checking for any sign that Mom might have woken up and was coming to look in on her. The house was still and silent. She made a mental note to talk to her Dad about something other than what she learned with Uncle Dean. And not to babble, ever again.

"You know, sometimes I'm still afraid if I breathe too hard, it'll all disappear."

Jodi inched forward on the porch roof. This was new.

"What are you talking about?"

"Jodi, Ava. I love them so much. You and me, being able to stand on my front porch -- _my front porch_ \-- and talk and not sleep in seedy motels every night and not having something always chasing us and not worrying we'll wind up dead at the end of it."

Of course she knew some of the things that had happened to them. Her eavesdropping habit had led to all sorts of fascinating information over the years. Like Dad had once been possessed. Like Dad and Uncle Dean had once been on the FBI's most wanted list. Like what her six-month birthday had been like. There were things beyond the usual family lore of vampires, ghosts, and Grandpa Winchester, things not discussed at Sunday dinners but were reserved only for these late-night porch conversations.

You'd think they'd have figured out her eavesdropping by now, but apparently not.

"Here's to peace," Uncle Dean said.

With the sound of bottles clinked together, a feeling of calm settled over her like another blanket.

After she finally climbed back through her window, she lay down on top of her covers with the blanket still around her shoulders.

The closet door was ajar. Jodi scrambled off the bed, shut it, and then hurried to crawl back under the blanket again.

She lay awake for a long time, watching the darkness.

~end


End file.
